It's December and I'm well nigh settled in after 2 months in France. I haven't really REALLY gotten homesick (despite my last entry) except for on Thanksgiving day. Explaining to my students the deliciousness of pumpkin pie (which you can't find in France) and telling the day's general timeline of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, football, food, sleep, football, food, sleep was just depressing. "In my country in approximately 4 hours...."
It's a pretty incredible thing that a country the size of the United States engages for the most part in one holiday from coast to coast. Shops shut down, people migrate home, and turkeys meet a butcher for the first and last time from California to New York. I made a powerpoint explaining the somewhat tainted history of Thanksgiving and describing how modern day Thanksgiving came to be, including: The presidential turkey pardon each year dating back to Truman and Black Friday. I never really gave much thought to this holiday as anything more than a TON of food and as I grew up, an excuse to meet old high school friends and get drunk on college vacation. Trying to convey TG's significance to a bunch of non-American teenagers and feeling the heaviness of home sickness (maladie du pays) actually gave Thanksgiving the validity that 24 years of Hallmark always tried to but could never accomplish.
The 5 Americans in Vernon created the most impressive Thanksgiving dinner of substitute ingredients that ever was and shared it with our English and German counterparts to unanimous applause. Delicious. Because if there's one thing the French and TG have in common, it's butter.
December 1st: SNOW! Yes, I've seen falling snow 2 or 3 times, and been to Tahoe and snowboarded (attempted to) but I have never lived in it. It. Is. Glorious. COLD. But glorious. It's 5 days in and I'm still giddy at the sight of the now brown clumps. Will this honeymoon period last through March (as I'm sure the snow will)? Who knows! For the time being I'm exhausting my camera and enjoying the frostbite :)
